chance for peace
by violent darlings
Summary: Shathan AU, post-Opera. Side of Grilo. Nathan stumbles into redemption and a life actually bearable to live in.


Shathan, M, and my first foray into the iPod shuffle type fics, in response to which my iPod disgorged a series of pop-type songs I was not aware I even possessed. Need to investigate haunted iPod after sleep. This may be extended depending on reaction, but complete for now... and yes, that was a not-so-subtle plea for reviews.

**Disclaimer**: No. Just... no. Unfortunately, no.

* * *

_**Mutiny Below; Ludo**_

She hasn't spoken to him since the night of the Opera; the surgeons patched him up and by the time he returned to the house, her clothes were gone. Well, some of them. Those that had been her mother's had been left behind. Her medicine and her medical alert bracelet and her mother's necklace were all left behind, tossed aside like trash. It would hurt him, but he doesn't think he's capable of it anymore.

He doesn't know where she is now. He thinks he may have seen her a few times, in the company of the Graverobber, wrapped up in an oversized coat, a cap of black curls beginning to grow on her head. But it could be wishful thinking. It could be anyone.

And in her absence he's purposeless.

He does the occasional bit of surgery, real surgery, not the clean and precise murder of the Repo Man but real, in a theatre surgery. He finds his hands just as steady on the scalpel as they ever were before the maiming and the monstrosity that consumed him in the wake of Marni's death. Now he puts people back together instead of taking them apart.

But without Shilo there's no point to it. He lives alone and eats alone and works alone. He lives off Chinese takeout and delivery pizza. There's no point to it without her.

Speaking of deliveries, the knock on the door has to be the pizza man. Who else?

Except he hasn't ordered yet.

And when he opens the door, she's there; eyes swallowing up her face, lips trembling, tiny fingertips blue.

"Daddy," she whispers, folds herself up inside his coat. "Oh, Daddy."

He doesn't know why she's here. He doesn't want to ask. He doesn't need to.

All that matters is that she's home.

* * *

_**The Technicolour Phase, Owl City**_

She doesn't say much; he thinks perhaps she doesn't want to shock him, or she just doesn't know what to say. Her little face, once so open to him, is impenetrable, her eyes steely. She's grown up, she's not yet eighteen, but she's so much more. She's everything.

They eat in silence, the pizza congealing as eventually he can no longer pretend he's eating and stares at her instead, drinking her in. She has curls, indeed, and she no longer needs to draw on her eyebrows. They're the same shape as her mother's were, but he can no longer compare Shilo to Marni. Marni was almost child-like. Shilo is too guarded for such light-hearted, youthful behaviour; a little old woman in a teenager's rapidly maturing body. And finally he can stand the silence no longer.

"Shilo," he hardly even recognises his own voice, after being silent for (weeks? days? months? who needs time without her?) so long. "What do you need?"

Such a simple question, but her face crumples. "I - " she starts but cannot complete, and of course he can't not reach out and touch her, her face and her new hair and the butterfly now inked on her left wrist. She feels bigger than she used to, heavier in terms of weight and emotional, and a few inches taller, as though being out in the (not really) fresh air of Sanatorium Isle has been a tonic, a cure, liberation. Yet she still fits in his arms; it is a relief, of sorts, that she has not grown beyond him.

"I need my dad," she finally stammers out, too fragile in his arms and yet not, a doll made of steel and spider silk.

Oh, Shilo, he sighs, but perhaps says, he doesn't know. "You'll always have me."

* * *

_**Hungry Eyes, Eric Carmen**_

How long he holds her, how long she lies in his arms like the child she once was, he cannot tell. His heartbeat is steady and his breathing is calm and it is the first time since she left him that he feels like he has a purpose again, no longer half of a whole, but complete.

And when she lifts her head from his shoulder and unwraps his arms from her waist, it's only natural for him to collapse back into his armchair, breathing as though he's run a marathon. She stands watching him, with those damned eyes. How he could have ever thought they were innocent is beyond him.

Wide eyes, so young, but not innocent. Not anymore. Now they want. Now they _hunger_.

"Shilo," he says, a prayer and an invocation and God help him, a moan, leaning back in his armchair as he did so often in their old home, outside her bedroom, listening to her voice. Listening to her life.

She comes closer, brushing her little hands against his face, sliding them down around his throat. Half a threat and half a promise and all perfection, as her lips close on his and oh, oh, this is what he's been missing.

She straddles him in a move that leaves him dizzy, tugging off her own knickers and his trousers with practised ease. Where did she practise? he wonders, but this disquieting thought is silenced when she shifts down and he bucks up, crying out at the wonderperfection of it all.

His daughter, and his lover. Both.

"We fit, Dad," Shilo says almost in surprise, and he can't help but gasp at the ragged sound of her voice, the gentle strain of a moan colouring her smooth soprano. "It's like we were meant for each other."

* * *

_**Kiss Me, Sixpence None The Richer**_

"It's a surprise," she says whenever he asks, tugging him by the hand as she consults the ragged map. "Graverobber," is the only answer he receives when he inquires as to its origins, and he has to subdue a stab of jealousy. Graverobber. Not THE Graverobber, but JUST Graverobber.

He wonders if _Graverobber_ taught her how to do that thing with her...

"We're here!" she announces excitedly, looking almost like a child again. It is a little disturbing to him when she does that, because he remembers exactly where those smiling lips have been on his body, and colours the approximate shade of a ripe tomato.

She always laughs at him when that happens. "Dad," she'd tease, "you're blushing. Shouldn't it be me that's being modest, the intrepid young ingénue being corrupted by the scary old Repo Man?" The first few times he had been stunned into silence by her casual mention of what had so repulsed her before, but now he's used to it. Almost. Now he'll merely retort, "Less of the old, Shi," back at her.

He thinks a little nostalgically for all the manners he taught her; they appear to be completely eradicated. He finds he minds less than he thought he would.

The place is a graveyard, as to be expected, the headstones overgrown and grassy, a river trickling by, only a little grey with pollution. "No good for zydrate," is the only reply he gets when he inquires about them.

They have a picnic right there amongst the graves and the grass, and when she takes him - not the other way round - by the riverbed, he feels the springy earth beneath him, the bright green life, and her above him, an angel of mercy, an angel of nature, and an angel of life.

* * *

_**Are You Happy Now?, Michelle Branch**_

"Do you just forget?" he asks one night, after staring at the hickey on her throat all evening. He certainly did not give her that. She only stays over three nights out of seven, at best, sometimes leaving for weeks at a stretch. She returns and its hugs and kisses and oral sex all round, and he's beginning to feel more like a booty call combined with a rest stop than anything else.

She still calls him Dad.

She glances up at him from where she's cleaning a zydrate gun. "Forget about what?" she replies, returning her eyes to the gun in her lap, almost fondly cleaning it and inserting a blue vial.

"Forget about me. When you're gone." She quirks an amused eyebrow. He thinks she picked that up from _him_. The Graverobber.

"You're six foot six, Dad, you're kind of hard to forget," she comments dryly. He slams a heavy hand down on the table, by her untouched plate and his barely touched one.

"That's not what I meant!"

"I know what you meant," she says evenly. "And I don't care."

He angrily murmurs a few choice words under his breath; her eyes light up with fire and he knows he's done it now. But he might as well give as good as he gets. She throws a plate at him; he ditches one right back at her. She follows with a roll and he hits her squarely in the chest with a potato.

They're not angry any more, she's laughing and he's only barely suppressing a chuckle, and the feel of her under him as he screws her on the kitchen floor, licking strawberry syrup from her breasts. And it's no solution, he knows that, but he needs her so much. He'll do anything to keep her.

* * *

_**Speechless, Lady Gaga**_

He doesn't usually drink, but she's been gone three weeks and it's getting hard to sleep through the night. He's reminded painfully of the nights after she was born, missing Marni like a thorn to the heart and constantly driven to check on Shilo every few minutes, as though a couple of hundred seconds were long enough for her to get into some mischief. He didn't drink then; he didn't deserve the comfort or need the distraction.

But now the flat echoes with Shilo's laughter, her soft moans, her screams from last time when he sat her on the kitchen counter and knelt before her, her warm skin surrounding him as she writhed against his tongue. He can't make toast in the morning now without getting a erection, and the sensation is both humbling and mildly embarrassing. He's in his forties, for God's sake; he's not a teenager anymore.

Although Shilo still is.

So he drinks himself happy, and then he drinks himself stupid, and then he drinks himself maudlin, staring into the crackling fire (the flat is 2040s, which explains the turn of the millennium revival furnishings). He remembers the curve of her neck and the scent of her hair, so different to the former smell of the wig, and ends up getting yet another erection and has to masturbate (again, like a teenager!) to get to sleep.

He's awakened by soft footsteps, and peering up into the darkness he sees only a white blur. But he smiles. Jack and Johnny seem cold comfort when she slides in beside him around two in the morning. "Picked the lock," she replies to his unspoken query, and he merely nods, drawing her in close to him as she snuggles her cold face into his neck.

What's there to say to that?

* * *

_**SOS, Rihanna**_

The next incident of drunkenness is not his.

He wakes, again in the wee hours, to her hovering over him in the dark. He fumbles for his glasses on the bedside table, clicking on the light. She stands there in a miniskirt and heels punishingly high and too much makeup on her chalky face.

"Shilo, where have you been?" he asks in horror and yes, a little amusement, helping her to take off her shoes and settling her onto the bed.

"Z addict's party," she mumbles. "Can't understand how she can afford all tha' booze but has'ta screw the Graverobber for a hit once a week. Maybe she likes it." And OK, he's not touching that sentence with a ten foot pole. "YOU!" Shilo declares suddenly, poking him in the chest. "Bastard. Can't stop thinking about you. Thinking about your stupid hands and your stupid lips and your stupid _chest_.

"I don't even wanna fuck Graves anymore. He's so pissed off about it," she slurs, and he can't fight back a smirk.

But it dies as he feels her hands scrabbling at his pants. He resists... for about half a second, still offering a half-hearted, "Shi, you're drunk,"

"Still wanna fuck you when I'm sober, Dad," she near growls, tugging down his pyjama bottoms with fumbling (and rather adorable) hands. "Wanna suck you, want you to treat me like a naughty little girl." And how's he supposed to resist that, when she licks his cock like a goddamned _lollipop_, pink tongue peeking between her teeth as she contemplates the task at hand. She takes his hands and winds them into her hair. "Want it so bad..."

And he loves her, so he gives her what she wants. Anything he gets out of it is - _oh_ - just a bonus.

* * *

_**We Will Rock You, Queen**_

She stays three days and disappears again for two weeks. He misses her like usual and is thrilled to find her in the kitchen one night when he returns home from work.

He is less thrilled to find the Graverobber has accompanied her.

The Graverobber struts around like he owns the world, but Nathan can't help but admire his confidence. He can't imagine the Graverobber turning to Shilo after intercourse and asking, hesitantly, "Was that all right?" usually to her amusement.

The Graverobber plunks a heavy, antique looking box down on the kitchen table. "What's this?" Nathan asks, poking it. It looks like trash.

"Organ Replacement, Generator, and Anti-Surgery Mechanism," says the Graverobber, uncharacteristically serious. "Hook someone up to that and they stay alive after a Repo Man rips out an organ. Not brains, but pretty much anything else."

"Why are you showing me?" Nathan asks, confused.

"If I can get it to work, and find replacement parts, will you do the surgeries?"

He considers it. It's the opposite of what he used to do. It's a stab back at the years of murders foisted upon him by GeneCO. It's a chance at redemption.

But more importantly than any of that, he can tell by Shilo's wide, shining eyes that it's what it wants. And that's really what sells it for him.

"Of course," he hears himself say, and that is that. The Graverobber smirks.

"We're gonna bring down the motherfucking establishment," growls Shilo like some kind of 1960s Sex Pistols fanatic (and isn't that showing his age, that he can remember the 2034 Sex Pistols revival movement?).

He can't help but get caught up in their enthusiasm; revolution is a cause for the young, but with Shilo beside him perhaps he can be young again, for a little while.

* * *

_**Teenagers, My Chemical Romance**_

The majority of the anti-GeneCO resistance movement are under twenty, pale and thin, mostly zydrate addicts. He suspects the Graverobber pays them in the drug for their efforts to bring down GeneCO. Fishnets and corsets and platform heels abound.

Shilo amongst them is often a drab little sparrow in comparison, until she talks. She appears to be the Graverobber's right hand man (woman, really), dealing out z in his absence and watching over his flock.

For all it's obvious failings, it's not a bad place. The meeting place is a vast room underground off from the main sewer system, meticulously cleaned and maintained to surgery standards. Graverobber's orders, again. He might not like the man but he has to admit he runs a tight ship.

People come in on stretchers, sans hearts, livers, stomachs. Any part possible to be ripped out has been, but its nowhere near the extent of what he himself has done over the years. The Graverobber's little ORGASM boxes do the job, despite looking like they're about to fall apart any moment. But more often than not defaulters can't be reached in time and instead die in the alleyways and the streets, to be murmured about later. There is always two or three people crying in the chairs in the corner, hands wrapped around cups of coffee and sniffing pathetically. He begins to carry extra handkerchiefs.

They call him Doc.

Their exploits simultaneously madden him and dazzle him. They're insane and heroic and they scare the shit out of him, but as one girl says one night as he sews up her leg, "Not like we have much else to live for."

They seem not to know that their precious lives can be snatched away in an instant. For that matter, neither does Shilo.

Honestly. Teenagers.

* * *

_**Come What May, Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman**_

Sometimes in the midst of what their lives have become, he forgets about her. It seems hard to reconcile that with the way his life had revolved around her merely a year ago, but she is no longer everything and all to him. Now he has the Doc's Flock, as they have come to be known, are a group of recovering z addicts from the resistance movement. Graverobber occasionally gives him lip about stealing his customers, but there's no real venom in it, not anymore. They have an understanding.

The movement is years away from being even vaguely fit to contest GeneCO. More specialists, surgeons, and engineers are needed to facilitate solutions in the face of the new world they find themselves living in. To make matters more difficult, Amber and her brothers are now aware of the movement's existence, and the amount of GeneCOPS (and their ferocity) have increased tenfold, spreading across the city like a bleak, venomous plague, destroying all in their path.

Sometimes he feels like he is drowning under the weight of all that he needs to accomplish - he can only imagine how Graverobber and Shilo, their leaders, feel. He is content to remain in the background, head surgeon and occasionally chef and confessor and saviour to a pack of confused, scared teenagers. Sometimes he feels totally at sea, lost in this ocean of despair, surrounded by frantic, struggling people he cannot possibly hope to save.

And yet, when he finally slips into bed at night, she is there to turn her face to his throat and press her cold lips to his collarbone. "Need my dad," she murmurs into his skin, as he rolls atop her in the dark and feels the world realign as her legs wrap around him.

"You'll always have me."


End file.
